This Too Shall Pass
by Lirillith
Summary: When Kotetsu's powers first manifest, none of the Kaburagis know what to do, but things have a way of working themselves out.


Muramasa knew something was up the moment he got in sight of the house.

For one thing, the shiny new delivery van was parked in the driveway, and just for confirmation, his dad's slightly scuffed dress shoes were sitting in the entryway. So were his mom's black flats, which meant she'd come straight home from the school instead of dropping by the store to do the books and change into flip-flops, and Kotetsu's abused sneakers, but that wasn't out of the ordinary for this time of day. What was out of the ordinary was the silence. The house felt _extremely quiet_ considering that it had Kotetsu in it. And both of his parents. No TV noises, no music, no Kotetsu making rocket ship noises or pestering Mom while she cooked; no food smells or cooking sounds or rattling pans or anything, either. No footsteps.

Muramasa was suspended somewhere just above worry as he approached the kitchen. It might be nothing much. Kotetsu had been getting in trouble at school, lately — fights and stuff, not doing his homework — but Dad shutting down the store was unusual, and so was the eerie quiet. His parents' voices were murmuring, low and indistinct, but he couldn't make out the words. Without realizing, he'd begun moving quietly — not quite tiptoeing, but watching his steps, and avoiding the creaking board in the hall — and his parents didn't turn when he reached the door of the kitchen, which was slightly ajar. They were seated across from each other at the table. "It's not the end of the world," his mother was saying, and his dad responded, "It's life-changing, though."

Muramasa nudged the door open, feeling a sort of coldness begin to gather in the pit of his stomach, even before his mother turned to face him and he saw that her eyes looked red. "Did something happen?" he asked, his voice sounding high and young and artificial.

Of course something had happened. Kotetsu had gotten into another fight, but this time he'd started glowing blue. He'd dislocated the other kid's shoulder and broken his collarbone. "He's one of those NEXTs," their father said. "Has been for a while. I bet that's how the Ueda kid's leg got broken."

"You don't know that," Mom said, getting up from the table to make more tea. "It was a soccer game. Kids get hurt. That's how Muramasa broke his arm back in... what, third grade?"

"That was just a fracture. Not liket his. And then the fights started after that. He's had these powers a month or more. Probably how he knocked that hole in his bedroom door, too."

Muramasa opened the refrigerator door. Dinner wasn't even started; he needed a soda or something. There were other things that were sort of clicking into place if Kotetsu was had a NEXT ability, things they'd had to clean up while his parents were at the store: the way Kotetsu had managed to break a water glass while holding it — he'd just chalked it up to a freak accident at the time — or the couple of broken dishes, which he'd just assumed Kotetsu had dropped. Maybe not. "So he's just super strong?"

"Tryin' to cool the whole house?" Dad snapped. Muramasa grabbed the first soda in reach and closed the door. "Strong, yeah. Who knows what else. The teacher who tried to break things up said he damn near took her arm off."

"He was upset," Mom said. "Panicking. If he sticks by the guidelines we gave him I think he'll be fine."

"I hope so," Dad said, doubtfully. "He's so..."

That was actually the part that bothered Muramasa the most. When Kotetsu started getting in trouble at school, Dad had laughed it off, saying boys would be boys, that kind of thing. It had pissed Muramasa off a little, because _he'd_ never gotten in fights. So if their father suddenly wasn't so in favor of letting Kotetsu run wild, what did that mean, exactly?

Either way, his parents were showing no interest in dinner, so he snagged a couple of apples in addition to his soda and headed for his room, leaving them to drink tea and talk it over forever. At his bedroom door, though, he hesitated, and then changed direction, down the hall to Kotetsu's room. His little brother had the Western-style room at the other end of the house from his — "Western-style" seemed kind of silly considering they weren't in Japan, but it was what his parents always called it — with, at the moment, a hole in the bottom of the door that Kotetsu had never fully explained.

"Hey," Muramasa said to the closed door. "Open up."

"I can't," Kotetsu said, quietly.

"Whaddaya mean you can't? Open up. I brought snacks."

"I _can't!_" Kotetsu half-shouted. He sounded like he was about to cry. Muramasa shifted his soda can to the crook of his elbow and turned the doorknob.

Kotetsu was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at his hands, which were glowing blue just like the rest of him. It was a weird effect, almost like a halo or an outline; it didn't obscure him or turn him blue like it ought to if it was coming straight out of his pores or something like that. Kotetsu's skin didn't look blue, though his eyes were blue and glowing as well. When he looked up, Muramasa could see that his eyes, despite the blue glow, were bloodshot and puffy. Muramasa realized his mouth had fallen open, and closed it. The glow faded out, quickly but not instantly, like a TV shutting off.

"See?" Kotetsu said, as if it proved some point.

"Yeah, you'll never need a night light again," Muramasa said, and tossed him an apple. Kotetsu caught it, and looked at it as if it might be booby-trapped. Muramasa fished his own out of the pocket of his hoodie and bit into it, feeling pretty proud of his cool-older-brother skills, considering he felt as freaked out right now as his parents had looked. He'd never really had an opinion of NEXTs before. It wasn't like he knew any personally. He'd thought heroes were simultaneously kind of cool and kind of cheesy, and he'd understood why people wouldn't be too happy with other NEXTs that weren't heroes; how could you trust somebody who could go invisible, or be bulletproof? They could do _anything_ if they felt like it.

But here was his baby brother, sniffling at an apple, a brand-new NEXT. "Why wouldn't you open the door?" Muramasa asked.

"I'd break it," Kotetsu said, sullen, eyes still on the apple. "Mom and Dad said I shouldn't touch anybody or do anything while I'm glowing like this. I could kill people."

"Whoa," Muramasa blurted out before he could stop himself. That got Kotetsu to look up, lip quivering. Okay, Muramasa was an awful older brother after all. "Who said that?" he asked. Had Kotetsu come up with it on his own, or was that from Mom or Dad? Or maybe one of the teachers. It was true, he guessed, but holy crap.

"Ms. Komatsu," Kotetsu said. "And Principal Nguyen, and Dad."

Muramasa bit into his apple kind of hard. Principal Nguyen had been a teacher back when Muramasa was in elementary school, and he hadn't liked her then, either. "Nguyen's a jerk," he said, mouth half-full of apple. "And I bet Dad's just repeating what the teachers were saying."

"It's true though," Kotetsu said. "I could have broken David's neck and he'd be paralyzed. Or dead."

"Okay, so maybe they're right about not touching people," Muramasa said. "You didn't _kill_ anybody, though. Break any necks."

"I wasn't even trying to hurt him!" Kotetsu said, voice rising. "I was just trying to get away! I didn't even notice I was glowing, it was like— and then I heard this snap—" He was crying again, wiping furiously at his eyes. Muramasa sat down on the edge of the bed, and reached over, not sure what he could do that'd even be comforting; they weren't exactly a huggy family. He settled for a hand on the top of Kotetsu's head, not tousling his hair, just sort of holding him there. It had never really occurred to him that being a NEXT sucked this much. Maybe if you were able to fly it was better. Why'd his kid brother have to get the short end of the stick?

"It was an accident," he tried. "You learned. Should be fine if you're careful."

"Maybe people won't try to fight with me now," Kotetsu said hopefully.

"What was up with the fights, anyway?"

Muramasa heard the loud crunch of Kotetsu taking a bite of apple. He finished his own soda, waiting it out, but Kotetsu was straight-up devouring that apple. "C'mon, tell me. You've been weird for a while now. I can explain it to Mom and Dad if you won't."

"Don't wanna talk about it," Kotetsu mumbled, his mouth obviously full.

"Yeah, well I don't wanna have apples for dinner either, but the parents are camped out in the kitchen having a parent-talk. We can't always get what we want."

"What?"

"Never mind. Tell me what's up, though." Silence. The crunch of the apple. "Dammit, Kotetsu!" That was immediately followed by a pitiful-sounding sniffle. Even if it was a deliberate guilt trip, it worked. "Are kids picking on you because you're a NEXT? Is that why you're getting into fights?" Seemed like the dumbest idea around, bully the kid who could snap you like a twig, but they were kids, after all.

Crunch. Crunch. "I'm taking that as a yes," Muramasa finally said.

"You can't tell Mom and Dad!"

So it really was a yes? "Why not?"

"Just don't! Promise?"

It was really hard not to just grab a fistful of Kotetsu's hair, with his hand there and everything, and shake him by it. It'd probably go a long way towards easing their parents' minds, if they knew he wasn't picking fights himself despite knowing he was superpowered. But Kotetsu was freaked out enough as it was. Maybe he could tell them later, when everyone had settled down a little. "Okay," Muramasa conceded. "You never used your powers in a fight before?"

Kotetsu shook his head, under Muramasa's hand. "It was an accident."

"So maybe the other kids'll know better next time."

* * *

Maybe they did. The family stopped hearing about any fights, anyway, and Muramasa was pretty sure Kotetsu couldn't have kept anything like that secret; if nothing else, word had gotten around town that Kotetsu was a dangerous NEXT, so if somebody picked a fight with him, anyone who knew about it would be around the store within a day complaining about how that youngest Kaburagi boy was a menace. It was amazing how fast Muramasa had decided he was in favor of NEXT rights. A lot faster than his parents had. His dad was always on Kotetsu's case, telling him to get his powers under control or be more careful, and his mom was always freaking out whenever Kotetsu broke anything, even when it was normal ten-year-old-boy clumsiness rather than his powers. Muramasa did a lot of helping him cover up; sweeping up broken glass, rearranging the dishes in hopes their mother wouldn't notice one missing, or slathering wood putty onto the part of the doorjamb Kotetsu accidentally splintered. That last one didn't actually work so well as a cover-up, though maybe they got points for effort.

It was depressing. Kotetsu had always been a noisy pain in the ass, but not anymore; he moped in his room all the time, and he'd stopped asking Muramasa for homework "help" that always ended up as Muramasa just doing his homework for him. No more space ship or robot noises or running around the yard with his friends playing Hero (and no friends coming over anymore, either) even though now he might actually someday _be_ a hero, since he was a NEXT. Then again, if he couldn't stop breaking things, his powers weren't going to do anyone much good.

Muramasa found himself in a weird position, like a mediator between Kotetsu and their parents. Between kid and adult. He finally secretly told his mom about the bullying, and his mom might have told his dad, and both parents kind of eased up on Kotetsu a little. It didn't stop Kotetsu from being quiet and mopey, and sometimes at dinner his eyes looked suspiciously red, but Muramasa wasn't sure he could do anything to stop kids from being little shits.

Then Kotetsu ran away from home. No one had realized he'd done it until Dad got the call from the Stern Bild police — the school had probably noticed he was missing but no one had called their parents, and the last Muramasa had seen him he'd been on his way to school — and had to close up the store and drive to the city to bring him back. "Good thing he volunteered," Mom said, as she watered the garden. Muramasa, sitting on the floor just inside, fidgeted with the pages of his history book, riffling them against his fingertip. He was not getting _any_ homework done tonight, clearly. "If I'd gone I'd have wrung his neck for scaring me like that."

"You didn't even know to be scared until after he was fine."

"Why should I let that stop me?" She tugged the hose along with her, moving to the next patch. "Maybe they'll have a chance at a heart-to-heart in the car," she added, hopefully.

"Maybe," he agreed. "What the hell was he doing in the middle of a bank robbery, anyway? Besides being a hostage. Why was he in a bank?"

"Let's hope he'll tell your father."

When the van pulled up in the driveway, it was well after dark. Muramasa had slogged through his history homework and was now dawdling over algebra when he heard the motor and the crunch of tires on the gravel. He jumped up, then delayed for a bit rather than just run to the entryway. Turned out he didn't even need to leave his room to hear them. "It was SO COOL," Kotetsu was exclaiming, and under that Muramasa heard his mother scolding, "Shoes!"

As the evening news and the police had already told them, Kotetsu had been taken hostage during a bank robbery, and used his powers to incapacitate one of the criminals, helping Mr. Legend arrest the gang. Kotetsu was only too happy to tell them again, at top volume. As his father took a couple of aspirin, Kotetsu explained how Mr. Legend had been like _crash!_ and the robbers were all like "no way!" and Mr. Legend was like "HUAHHH!" and then the one robber was like "I'll kill this kid!" and Kotetsu was like "YAAAAHH" and Mr. Legend was all "You saved me!"

* * *

Kotetsu was back to his old self, only, if possible, _even louder._ It was good to see, if also annoying. Sometimes he still came home unhappy and unsocial, but an episode of Hero TV would always fix his mood. He didn't go back to bringing friends around — maybe the reflected glory of helping Mr. Legend wasn't quite enough, or maybe Kotetsu didn't feel like spending that much time with people who used to beat him up until he met a famous hero — but it didn't seem to bother him so much anymore. And he'd gotten the hang of freezing when his powers came on; a month after his adventure in Stern Bild, he'd only broken broken three plates. Muramasa privately suspected the plates had been kinda-sorta on purpose, to get out of doing the dishes, but he couldn't exactly prove it.

Then one afternoon, when their parents were still at the store, Kotetsu peered into Muramasa's room, his head glowing. "Whoa," Muramasa said. "If you wanted me to make you a sandwich that bad, all you had to do was say 'please.'"

"Stupid, that's not— Can I please have a sandwich? But I wanted you to set a timer! Okay?"

"What? Why?"

"Just do it! It's four now, right?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Two minutes after, by Muramasa's watch. He got up with a finger between the pages of his book to pull the door open further. Kotetsu was standing with his hands clasped behind his back. "Why?"

"Because I'm trying to— that science word. I'm trying to figure out how long it lasts!"

Experiment. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Make me a sandwich and I'll explain. Please?"

Muramasa followed Kotetsu as he walked carefully, arms slightly extended like he was on a balance beam, to the kitchen. "I need to see how long it is till I can use them again," Kotetsu said.

"Still don't know what you're talking about. Until you can use them? There some kind of time limit on them?"

"Yeah!" And as Muramasa spread mayo and mustard on slices of bread — and then, of course, more mayo — Kotetsu explained. He'd used his powers coming home from school — they let him run faster, and their parents had never said he wasn't allowed to use them at all — and then found that he couldn't use them again when he needed to climb the second big hill between their house and the elementary school. Once he'd gotten home, he hadn't been able to turn them on until just before he'd come to Murmasa's room. "My door might be kinda..." He trailed off. "How hard are hinges to fix?"

"I'd ask what you did, but I'm hoping Mom will just forgive you if you got your powers under control for real." Kotetsu had stopped glowing at about six minutes after. "So we're gonna check again at five, and see if they last five minutes again."

* * *

Years later, when Kotetsu was in his first season as a hero and already developing his reputation for breaking windows, knocking down walls, and throwing cars, Muramasa and Anju kept a running tally of his televised destruction. "Turns out damage fines are no joke," Kotetsu said over the phone. "I gotta be sure I don't break anything I don't need to."

"We should send you an invoice for all the repairs we made back to the house, back in the day," Anju mused.

"Adjusted for inflation," Muramasa added, his voice raised so Kotetsu would hear, and his mother laughed.

* * *

Years later than that, when Kaede developed her own powers, Muramasa shut the store down early in response to his mother's harried-sounding calls and texts to find his mother, looking shell-shocked, huddled over a cup of green tea in the kitchen. The same spot, he thought, that she'd been sitting opposite his father when it had been Kotetsu's powers; she hadn't moved the chair even though the table was snapped in two in front of her. He surveyed the destruction, the bent utensils and the collapsed table and the neat pile of crockery shards, swept into place but not disposed of, and decided he'd better choose his words carefully.

His mother wasn't as broken-down as she seemed at first glance, though. "Hard to believe Kotetsu managed to keep his powers secret," she said, "considering how Kaede's doing."

"We better hope she doesn't go into the family business," he said, picking up a frying pan with its handle shaped, like a handful of clay, into Kaede's grip. "There'll be nothing left standing in Stern Bild. Or the store."


End file.
